NASA Says Columbia Will Launch Next Week

Published 1:39 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

NASA said Thursday it will launch space shuttle Columbia next week on a science mission with Israel's first astronaut, pending resolution of the latest crack problem.

Last month, a crack was discovered in the plumbing of shuttle Discovery. The surface crack was in a 2 1/4-inch metal ball located in a liquid oxygen line; the sphere allows the line to flex at the joint.

Engineers have spent the past month conducting tests to see whether such a crack would impair the propellant lines or cause metal fragments to be sucked into a main engine during liftoff. They need more time to complete their analyses and will report to shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore on Sunday evening, right before the start of the countdown.

Dittemore said engineers suspect the crack in Discovery resulted from a defect in the ball, an original shuttle part. "Whether it did it on the 10th flight or the 20th flight or the 28th flight, we don't know," he said.

Before he commits to a Jan. 16 launch of Columbia, Dittemore said he wants to make sure the ship would be safe to fly even if it had a cracked ball joint like the one inside Discovery. "We don't have any real indications that look like this is going to be a show stopper for us," he said.

The 18 balls in Columbia's liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen lines cannot be checked adequately at the launch pad. Inspections on Atlantis and Endeavour have uncovered no cracks.

Last summer, NASA's entire shuttle fleet was grounded after a different type of fuel-line crack popped up in all four ships.

Among the seven astronauts assigned to Columbia's long-delayed mission is Ilan Ramon, who will become the first Israeli in space.